CEDAR CITY – The Cedar Redmen girls tennis team is bringing in a new coach and looking to prove it can hang with the top Region 9 teams.

After a 6-9 record in 2013, Cedar has worked hard to become a better team in the offseason and has set goals to keep the team focused and become better people and athletes.

Savannah Werber, Cedar’s first singles star, explained some of the things the team worked on during the offseason.

“We worked a lot on forehand, backhand, just different types of hitting and working with your partner,” Werber said.

Head coach Rebecca Henrie said she wants to win, but it is not her main goal for the team going forward.

“I want them to hustle; I don’t ever want to see them flat-footed,” Henrie said. “I want them to work hard and work as a team. Even with our opponents, I want them to say ‘good shot’ or ‘good serve’ and be good sports about it. As a team, I just want it to be a positive atmosphere for all the girls.”

Henrie said she has seven new players that have never played tennis before so she wants it to be fun and a positive experience so they will choose to come back to play.

Werber doesn’t want to stop with just making friends with the team.

“I’d like to be friends with the people I play on the other teams also,” Werber said. “I just want to be better myself.”

Second singles player Taylen Lamoreaux wants Cedar to be part of the top teams.

“I just want to play hard; we just want to do our best and make it to region,” Lamoreaux said. “Be one of the top four teams.”

Henrie is already preparing the team to be better by seeing what is needed to get wins on the schedule.

“We are hitting it too much to (our opponents’) forehand,” she said. “We need to keep hitting it to their high backhand.”